The nominal effective exchange rate (EER) of a currency is an index of the trade-weighted average of its bilateral exchange rates vis-à-vis the currencies of selected trading partners, while the real EER is derived by adjusting the nominal index for relative prices or costs. The nominal EER...

This study examines the marginal effects of traditional determinants of exports and imports with a focus on the role of price competitiveness in restoring external balances. It is a first attempt to compare marginal effects of various harmonised competitiveness indicators (HCIs) on both exports...

A core stylized fact of the empirical exchange rate literature is that half-life deviationsof equilibrium real exchange rates from levels implied by Purchasing Power Parity(PPP) are very persistent. Empirical efforts to explain this persistence typicallyproceed along two distinct paths,...

There is a broad consensus that the quality of the political system and its institutionsare fundamental for a country’s prosperity. The paper focuses on political events inItaly over the past 35 years and asks whether the adoption of the euro in 1999 hashelped insulate Italy’s financial...

A striking and unexpected feature of the financial crisis has been the sharpappreciation of the US dollar against virtually all currencies globally. The paper findsthat negative US-specific macroeconomic shocks during the crisis have triggered asignificant strengthening of the US dollar, rather...

We reappraise the relationship between productivity and equilibrium real exchangerates using a panel estimation framework that incorporates a large number ofcountries and importantly, a dataset that allows explicit consideration of the role ofnon-traded, as well as traded, sector productivity...

The elasticity of exports to exchange rate fluctuations has been the subject of a large literature without a clear consensus emerging. Using a novel sector-level dataset based on firm level information, we show that exchange rate elasticities double in size when the country and sector specific...

This paper takes a financial market perspective in examining the relationship between oil prices, the US dollar and asset prices, and it exploits the heteroskedasticity for the identification of causality in a multifactor model. It finds a bidirectional causality between the US dollar and oil...